1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to animal husbandry and, in particular, to paper receptacles of the folded blank box-type for disposing of animal wastes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many cat waste stations, euphemistically referred to by pet owners as kitty litter boxes, are made of plastic. An exemplary tray-like box is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,745,975. Every three to six days, these boxes must be cleaned out, i.e., the wastes must be separated and disposed of and the plastic tray must be washed and dried. New litter, which may be moisture-absorbing clay pellets or other granular materials, is then placed in the bottom of the box. This is a messy and disagreeable task for most pet owners.
In order to make this task less unpleasant, some manufacturers have begun supplying their kitty litter boxes with plastic liners as a supposedly more convenient and more readily disposable means for carrying out the task. An example of such a prior art device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,155. However, this solution has not been satisfactory because the plastic liners have no absorbing ability and cats often quite easily rip through the liners with their claws. Therefore, the noxious smell is not curtailed and occasionally becomes more unpleasant if some of the animal wastes are trapped in part by a plastic liner.
Another way of making the clean-up task less unpleasant has been the substitution of the plastic trays by some manufacturers with throwaway paper receptacles. Examples of such prior art structures are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,743,170; 3,581,975; 3,170,618; and 3,154,052. However, the common fault with each of these boxes is that there is only one layer of paper between the kitty litter and the floor of the pet owner's dwelling. Such a single layer, even though it may be thick, is usually insufficient to prevent the wetting of the floor, particularly if the animal waste is liquid, because moisture readily diffuses through paper.
Thus, it has remained a problem in the prior art to develop a pet relief station which will not leak and which is readily disposable.